Medieval Lords is a video game released in 2004 by the French company Monte Cristo Multimedia. It plays like a medieval version of SimCity being like a city building game where the violence and battles take a back seat to village management like providing food, entertainment, religious amenities and transit to your peasants so you can collect taxes on them. One of the uncommon features in the game is that you can enter a first person view and walk around your own town as if you were a villager. Medieval Lords was also the name of a turn-based game published in 1991 by Strategic Simulations that simulated medieval European warfare, nation building, economics, and political realities.
Medieval Lords brings city builders inside the walls of richly-detailed cities during the Middle Ages.
Medieval Lords - Build, Defend, Expand
Demo Version
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PRESENTATION:
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"Medieval Lords - Build, Defend, Expand" is a new type of game : it allows you
to experience several different things.
BUILD : Medieval Lords is the first city builder to offer a real 3D
engine! This allows you to make the most of the landscape, to optmize your
fields irrigation or admire the richeness og the vegetation! Layout your city
as you want: you can develop your kingdom without having to stay within the
confines of an invisible square grid, htanks to a powerful 3D engine that
allows more complex placement. Ensure your populations' well-being by taking
care of its six primary needs: Water, Food, Security, Serenity, Health et
Leisure.
DEFEND : Medieval Lords adds a new challenge: defend your city and your
kingdom's wealth against the attacks of rival sovereigns. You're now
responsible for your population's security!
EXPAND your kingdom: your population increases and your lands do not
provide sufficient food. Take control of new territories and subdue villages
that had tried to escape your authority!
AIM OF THE GAME:
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You should build a Stone Bridge to link up to the island where the
lighthouse is. To do so, you need a Mason who can be found in a fortified
village on the main island. Build wooden bridges to go annex the village. But
beware! Brigands, Vikings and other ennemies will try and make your life
harder!
GAME INSTRUCTIONS:
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Interface :
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Top: Population, available workers, Numbre of soldiers/ Maximum number of
soldiers, Last message, Level of the town, Objectives, Current food / max food
stock currently possible, Treasury
Left: Construction interface
All the buildings you will need to build are to be found here.
Bottom Left: Minimap, navigation, first person view, Menu, Speed, Hide
interface, Date.
Left of the Minimap are the following advisors : Budget, Food, Technology. It
then shows the various Maps. These buttons give you access to vital
information.
Start of the game:
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To start the game, click on "start the game". You may now place your
first dungeon on the island where a bridge and a few houses already are. Once
your dungeon is built, ensure the it is linked by road to the other buildings.
Only the buildings linked to your dungeon belong to you and bring you gold and
food.
Make sure your buildings have enough water. if they do not, an icon
showing a big drop of water crossed out will appear above the buildings. You
can build a few more houses but remember that too many inhabitants will use up
all your food reserves in the blink of an eye!
To avoid this, start by building food production buildings. In the demo,
there is the fishing hut, the hen coop the vegetable patch and the corn field.
Each of these buildings have their own advantages and disadvantages, up to you
to choose carefully where you build and how many you build!
The food thus produced is stocked in your main Dungeon, but you will soon
require more storage space. You will need to build a granary to increase your
storage capacity. The granary and the dungeon stock the food that is produced
and distribute ot to nearby houses. If a barred granary appears over your
buildings it means said buildings are too far away from the granary or to
linked to them by road.
Your village is developping... and is a prime target for its neighbours!
To defend yourself, you should recruit soldiers. To do so, build an infantry
recruitment camp (Security \ Soldiers\ Infantry recruitment camp). Once this is
build, click on it, then on the "recuit troops" button. Soldiers will then be
recruited from amog the population. You cannot recruit more than 5 troops at
once from the same recruitment camp. Once the troops are recruited you can
select and place this troops on towers, dungeons, or on the landscape. They
will defend themselves from any attack that comes their way. However beware:
its free to recruit soldiers, but they don't fight on empty stomachs. A squad
of 50 soldiers costs 5 gold coins and 5 food units of monthly upkeep. And if
you are unable to feed or pay them, they will desert!
Once your town's budget is balanced, you can build a carpenter. The
carpenter is the first technology available, it will give you access to new
buildings, most notably the wooden bridge. This is essential to progressing in
this mission: it allows you to reach other islands and take over any ennemy
villages you find there.
To take over a village, place your troops in their territory (you can
tell how many soldiers your ennemy has by clicking on the village dungeon); a
count-down appears: It's God's Truce. During this truce, the two sides cannot
attack each other. Make the most of this time to deploy your troops and think
out your strategy, as your ennemy will have no mercy on you! You have taken
over a village when your troops destriy the ennemy dungeon. If your troops are
all killed, the villag remains independant.
BEWARE: In the same way, others might target your own dungeon! If it is
destroyed, you've lost!
You now have the means to build to build a great city and protect it from your
ennemies! Good luck!
Keys :
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Game controls :
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ESC - In-Game Menu
P / Space Bar - Pauses the game
+ / - on num pad - Speeds up / slows down the game.
DEL - Destroy selected building
R - Repair selected building
S - Stop selected building's activity
CTRL + select troops - Select several troops (up to 250)
O - See mission objectives
F9 - Quick save
F5 - Quick load
F7 - Take a screenshot (the screenshots are saved
at the root of the game's directory)
Camera movements :
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Left/ right/ up/ down cursor arrows - Move viewpoint
Page up / Page down - Zoom in / Zoom out
CTRL + left / right cursor arrows - Rotate viewpoint
CTRL + maximum zoom - First person view
IMPORTANT ISSUES:
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- Close all other programs before launching Medieval Lords.
- Using task swapping with ALT+TAB is unadvisable while playing Medieval
Lords.
- This game has been optimised for the latest generation of nVidia & ATI based
video cards. You might encounter problems with other graphics cards. The nVidia
GeForce 2 family and the ATI Radeon 7500 family are supported
- Your video card requires at least 64 Mb of video memory.
- The program requires DirectX 9.0b
FAQ / TROUBLESHOOTING
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The shadows don't work well on my GeForce 5200 FX
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Install the latest drivers for your card. available on nVidia's
website. This should solve the problem.
The game is slow on my machine
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Adapt the graphic options of the game to your computer's capacities.
Try the "Medium" or if that fails "Low" graphic options. You can eventually set
your options more precisely using the "Personnalize" menu option.
The game is too difficult
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You can change the game's difficulty. To do so, click on the "campaign"
item in the main menu and choose the difficulty level of the mission you have
selected.
You can also choose the "difficult" setting if the game holds no
secrets for you. You can even personalize the difficulty level using the
"Personnalize" menu item.